Torrential rain will continue to ravage the Pearl and Yangtze River Delta regions over the weekend, weather officials said on Friday.

Yang Minyi, from the Guangdong flood, drought and wind prevention office, said the rains have already killed at least 10 people with several others missing.

"Typhoon Fengshen has left Guangdong but the downpours remain," Lin Liangxun, from the Guangdong provincial observatory, said.

"Torrential rains will continue in the delta region, mainly Yangjiang in the west, Shanwei in the east, and Shaoguan and Qingyuan in the north of the province during the weekend," she said.

"We recorded the highest rainfall for 200 years in the region on Thursday, after the typhoon hit the province."

Total economic losses from the typhoon and the rains are still being calculated, she said.

The Yangtze River Delta region, which entered the rainy season on June 6, also witnessed heavy rain on Friday.

A drizzle in Shanghai that started in the morning turned into a downpour by noon.

By 3 pm, more than 10 roads in the city's Baoshan and Putuo districts saw floods that affected traffic.

Also on Friday, up to 60 mm of rainfall fell in Zhejiang province.

In Chenzhou, Hunan province, torrential rain affected 226,000 people in 55 townships in seven counties or districts, the city's anti-flood office said.

Among them, the Beihu and Suxian districts and Linwu county were worst hit, with a direct economic loss of 64 million yuan ($9.3 million), officials said.

The threat of flood also forced the evacuation of 20,000 people living downstream of three quake-formed lakes detected on Thursday in quake-hit Dujiangyan, Sichuan province.

Hydrological and meteorological departments in Sichuan issued flood warnings on Friday, forecasting that the summer flood was likely to be the biggest in a decade.

The flood is expected to hit in the beginning of next month, earlier than in past years because of abnormal rainfall in May, they said.

Precipitation in Sichuan between May and June was 30 to 70 percent more than that of the same period last year, the China Meteorological Station said earlier this month.

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency June 28, 2008)